Dholcrist

Did a search over the forums, and the internets, and thus far have come up with nothing whatsoever. I'm working with a friend to create an original SF setting in the year 2176, and we thought it was pretty important to have actual interplanetary distances on the start date of the setting (1/1/2176). At first I was just going to copy directly from the Transhuman Space book that lists distances as of 2100, but I really would like to avoid just stealing their work.

So, my question is this: does anyone know of an online program that calculates the distances of all the planets and (hopefully) all of the major asteroids from each other as of a given date? And if there's not a program available, how would one go about figuring that out?

Thanks guys, I know that if anyone could help me out with this, they're in this forum.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Quick setup:

Our game is fantasy using the Conan 1st ed. ruleset in a homebrew world. Our characters are Imperial Inquisitors, two former soldiers who after a terrible war have been stationed at a small city to keep the Emperor's Peace, and to root out any signs of treason or handle anything that is beyond that of the local city guard. My character is Belkin, a former cavalry soldier of the Empire's most elite squad, while my friend is Gannon, a former mercenary and general "ends justify the means... as long as I get rich" type. He's the best though, so his general shadiness is overlooked. Also, the Inquisitors are basically like Judges in Judge Dredd, or Spectres in Mass Effect (the ultimate in law enforcement, they answer to no man except for the upper echelons of the nobility, and that's only when the Inquisitor has crossed into their jurisdiction).

Anyways, during our first game we were headed to the city we were stationed in and happened by a wagon that had been obviously attacked, the men in it killed. Upon further inspection, we discovered that the wagon still had a great deal of supplies in it; food, water, liquors, medicines, etc. We searched the killed men, and found that they were actually soldiers disguised as travelers. And they had a good amount of coin on them.

Gannon: "I don't think this was a robbery," he says as he transfers gold from the men's coin pouches into his own.

Belkin: "No, I think you're right. But I think THIS might be!"

Another game we were playing "Good Inquisitor Bad Inquisitor" with a suspect, grilling information out of him. Once we were satisfied that we had gotten all we could out of him, I had begun to leave to notify the chief of the guard that he could take him away. As I did so, Gannon drew his sword and calmly angled it directly at his throat. The man started to cry.

"Don't embarass yourself," Gannon said. "It'll be over in a moment." Luckily I was able to jump between them and simply cold cock the kid.

Course, the Captain of the Guard had him hanged within the hour.

Re: Mega Men

Very cool idea, I'm always up for just about anything Mega Man related.

The original Blue Bomber, of course.

Though when I saw the post I thought somebody was actually making a Hero game based off of the post-apocalyptic Mega Man rock opera by the band the Protomen.

That I would like to see done.

Alright, I know this is pretty well treaded ground already, but all the software I've found for modeling galactic scale starmaps is for Windows (and most of those for older Windows OS's). I was wondering if anybody knew of anything made for the Mac? I have Astrosynthesis on my desktop PC, but it's buggy as hell on Vista and I'm never able to use the machine because I do all of my writing on my laptop (and most of that is outside of the home).

Sorry if this is already covered, and I'm not holding my breath, but anything would help.

Oh, and I do have Celestia on the laptop, which is great, but I'm hoping for something more along the lines of Astrosynthesis that actually allows for real mapping. Thanks everybody.

Re: Mass Effect Campaign Setting

One of my gm's is actually wanting to start a ME campaign, but is intent on using the Star Wars Saga Edition rules and converting them over. Personally, I'm pretty against this, so I've been pushing for using Star Hero.

In the interest of convincing him of this, any new updates on rules/stats/campaigns?

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

oh yeah that was good

i havent watched any yesterday but today i plan to watch the universal version of STREET FIGHTER to get in the mood for the chuin li movie coming out this month

You mean to prepare yourself by lowering your expectations so much that the Chun Li movie might be bearable?

Desert Punk -- Post-Holocaust action-adventure comedy. I lost interest after episode 6 and returned it to a friend who I borrowed it from.

 

The Boondock Saints -- Two fine Irish lads decide it's time to strike back at criminal scum. A Dark Champions origin story if there ever was one.

I watched the first episode of Desert Punk a couple of weeks ago on Netflix streaming, and while I liked the setting and the concept, the actual execution was terrible. Too bad.

And Boondock Saints is an awesome movie. Don't know how many times we've made the characters into Cyberpunk pc's.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

OKay' date=' saw the Batman and the Brave and the Bold cartoon "Fall of the Blue Beetle" in its entirety. I must admit, it was pretty good. Ted got a lot of respect in this one, and nothing was taken from Jaimie[/quote']

 

Yeah, that was the first episode of the B: B&B cartoon I'd seen, and I must say I was impressed.

 

Also watched the first two eps. of Wolverine and the X-Men, and while I hate how it's so centered on Logan, and the animation is rather sub-par, it was still a very cool cartoon with a pretty decent concept.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

No, How can recommend to Markdoc to forget something I haven't seen yet.

 

unless you are making a recommendation.

I've only seen the commercials, but I have seen the first one. So, by extrapolating probable quality based off of these two sources, you could say I'm making an anti-recommendation.

And yeah, I love the first two Mummy movies quite a bit, and even saw Scorpion King on opening day. Just struck me as a somewhat lame version of the original Conan movie. Which is too bad, because the "Rock" should be a fantastic action star (for the one movie where this is true, see "The Run Down").

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Scorpion King is released after Mummy 2 and before Mummy 3. Don't forget Scorpion King 2 as well.

Surely you mean "forget Scorpion 2 as well."

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Just watched the first two episodes of Planetes, an anime series set in the late 2060's during the rise of space travel. It follows a space debris cleanup crew through their everyday life, working to clean all of the crap floating in orbit around the Earth after a shuttle carrying civilians was destroyed by a screw traveling at several meters a second.

Like many anime, it has its goofy moments, which is one of the things I don't like about most anime series. But it has a surprising large amount of hard science behind it, and they're obviously trying to portray things as realistically as possible. Definitely going to keep watching it.

Re: Transporter Accident

Ironhide, (a Colossus clone) after armoring up and ready to break some heads, would eventually cooperate and allow the medical officers to run their tests, all the while trying to glean as much information on his current surroundings as possible. He'd try to figure out what had happened to his team, and what their current status was. Once he found out that he was in a future identical to Star Trek, he would request a flight back to Earth, where he would scour the archives for information on Mutants and his own team, Legion X. Once he realizes that this may not be the same universe, he would still attempt to make contact with his own time/dimension, and try leaving messages in various places on Earth for his teammate, Kenix Kil (master time traveler) to discover. Then he would take up work as an engineer, learn the proper sciences needed for starship engineering, and find work where possible. Or maybe he would just explore the galaxy on his own?

Moon Spectre, (a Moon Knight clone) would pull his own twin Desert Eagles on the transporter techs, disarm them, and then escape the room. He would use his technology scrambling suit (scrambles all sensors so that he appears as a simple blur on any electronic media) to escape security teams, and eventually make his way to the hangar, where he would attempt to steal a shuttle and launch it on autopilot to the nearest planet. Hoping that this would keep the crew distracted, he makes his way to the Captain's quarters, where he ambushes him and demands to know why he has been kidnapped. Once things were sufficiently explained, he would also demand to be returned to Earth, for he is the chosen protector of humanity by the Egyptian god Khons, and his power stems from the light of Luna. He returns to Earth, catches up on current events, tracks down any possible cults of his enemies, and if there are none in this reality, moves to a colony on the moon where he lives forever, until he discovers a way home. That is, unless in this reality Khons cannot grant him eternal life through the power of the moon, in which case he would believe that he has failed as Earth's protector, and strikes out on his own, giving up his heroic identity and adventuring throughout the galaxy.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Well it's a good thing that I watched Shoot Em Up last night then... they went through enough bullets in that movie to fill a dump truck.

 

I found it quite amusing. You gotta love a movie with a free-fall gunfight.

 

My wife, OTOH, was not particularly fond of it. Women... sheesh.

Oh, wow, I completely forgot to mention that movie. Watched it for the first time about two weeks ago.

Any movie that has so many casualties that over a dozen people die in the sex scene, I'm happy. Clive Owen is a good man.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Valkyrie.

Pretty good, though not amazing. Visually very well done, conveyed the story rather well, and had a great cast. Unfortunately, the cast was a little too... international. The mix of accents that were all supposed to be actually speaking German was a little jarring from time to time, especially Cruise. Just weird when you had secretaries with German accents speaking to someone with a British accent being yelled at someone with an American accent. Other than that and a few other small things, pretty good overall.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Started watching MI-5 with the roommate (I believe it's known as "Spooks" in the UK). We'd been looking for somewhere to pick it up for a while, but just happened to discover it on the Netflix Instant View list and been watching it on the 360.

Started out pretty bad. Like, hilariously bad. But once it hit the third episode, the kid gloves were off and we couldn't stop watching it. Brilliant show. Aside from the handful of episodes that have these huge plots that are extremely well done, but they wrap up in the last three minutes.

Two big examples of this are one: a plot to kill President Bush that's foiled without any intervention from MI-5 whatsoever. And another where a terrorist plans on causing a nuclear plant to go Chernobyl in North England but once you actually see the terrorists who plan to blow it up it's just two guys with a rocket launcher sitting in a field. Somewhat disappointing.

Can't wait to start the second series.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Just finished Ghost in the Shell Stand Alone Complex: 2nd Gig.

Loved it even more than the first season. Really phenomenal stuff near the end. Man I hope they get around to making a 3rd Gig.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

A "friend of mine" (as opposed to a "friend of ours" ) emailed me saying I just had to watch LEXX. He raved about it. Real glowing review. I'll love it he said. But not much hard detail. "It's hard to describe" says he' date=' which is the one thing he said that I agree with. Now, this fellow knows me and my mores, and we have passably similar tastes, and while I'm not much of a TV watcher I'll give a show a try on a recommendation. So, I went online and found an archive and streamed the first episode. I sit down to watch and... WHAT WAS HE THINKING? Not just WWHT about the show, which didn't pique even a grunt of interest and game off as low-budget weird, but WWHT to tell [u']ME[/u] I should watch this show? Talk about cerebral flatulence. Dear me, the only thing I just had to do was turn it off (despite my "give it a chance by watching the whole episode" policy).

Yeah, it's an awful, awful show. I used to watch it when they showed it on Sci-Fi channel at 3 am back in high school, but more just because it was hilarious. And wasn't the woman who controlled the LEXX super hot? That probably had something to do with it.

Oh foolish youth.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Just finished watching the first season of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. Been meaning to get around to it forever now, but with Netflix now on the 360 I was able to just stream the entire season on the tv. I had seen a lot of it off and on a while back, but never wanted to throw down the cash for the dvd's. Really great stuff. Started the 2nd Gig last night, we'll see if it lives up to the first.

Also watched Next Avengers, which I didn't like at first, but towards the end became a very 80's kids movie, which I'm all about. Ended up enjoying it quite a bit. Though I wish the animation was a tad bit better for the first half of the movie.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

If you are talking about Prof. Wickwire' date=' John Astin has been playing effectively the same character long before Back to the Future, even back to The Addams Family.[/quote']

 

Yeah, I actually just realized that's who it was while watching the second episode. I think it's because I watched Back to the Future part III about two days before, so crazy old Doc Brown in the wild west was still pretty fresh.

 

Loving this show though.

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Just finished watching the pilot episode of Briscoe County Jr. Loving it so far, rockets and everything.

My only complaint is the scientist character seems to be trying very, very hard to do a Doc Brown impression. Which is fine, just too bad that they couldn't get Christopher Lloyd to actually play Doc Brown. That would've been epic.

Re: Fallout 3: Postapocalyptica

Do the NPCs ever run out of ammunition in this game?

They have to reload, but I've never witnessed them actually run out of ammo.

Re: Fallout 3: Postapocalyptica

I often play Monks or other HTH types in games. Do you think that would be possible with Fallout3?

Haven't tried it myself, but there are several perks that are designed specifically for hand to hand. "Paralyzing Palm" I believe is one. Also, there are several weapons in the game like Power Fists and various brass knuckles that are designed to help you out with that.

Not sure how well it works, but they seem to have it in mind.

Re: Fallout 3: Postapocalyptica

Out of curiosity, can you repair Lincoln's Repeater with stannert huntin' rai-fulls? That'd be DERN handy. I haven't used it because it was so beautiful and pristine I couldn't bring myself to lower its quality, but you're right, it does look PRETTY DEISEL.

 

The issue of course is that you do get better; you conserve ammo, you build a stockpile, you find hunting rifles and enough combat shotguns to piece one together and you're ready to rock and roll. There are a LOT of elements in the game that were left 'game friendly' and not 'wasteland survival' specific. For example:

 

Ammo has no weight.

 

Wait, what? This is Wasteland Survival! Ammo weighs a TON by itself! It does. It should. It doesn't. And that's wrong. It means you really can carry five BOXES of 5.56 and not notice it. Your carrying limit seems absurd against that, because you look down and see you've still got 545 10mm rounds for your SMG and think, "Yeah... I can do this." Mind you, you're firing at video-game speeds and you can consume 5.56 rounds like they're candy when you empty a clip into something, but still -- it's fun, but frustrating. With no weight to factor, there's no challenge.

 

There are things I would have considered doing differently; I'd give ammo & stim packs weight. I have close to 70 just... sittin' around. I would reduce the number of stim packs and give healing in bed a specific amount of time. I would introduce rad creep, because nothing really stays safe in the Wasteland. Throwing in mini-games, while annoying to some, can be compelling and well done. The pipe game from BioShock never got that old, and I'd like to see something similar (and scaled, in terms of challege, based on skill) for repair. They have one for lock picking and for hacking, why not have one for repair? Challenge the player.

 

Change the layout from day to night. Introduce different creatures. Make us use junk to repair weapons, instead of just another weapon (although, really, the last makes total SENSE, it shouldn't be magically doable in the field). It should require parts, or a work bench. Little things. CND drops quickly; if you had to be at a work bench, you'd be far more inclined to take two personal favorites, and far less inclined to fire off rounds willy-nilly.

 

I'm okay with a 'casual' difficulty, but I think mentally I'm in a place where 'more difficult' no longer means 'more hitpoints.' It means 'more challenging based on the game concept,' and the concept is survival.

Nail on the head on all points.

First though, yes, the Repeater is repairable using any Hunting Rifle. Makes it rather devastating against Super Mutants since it does very good damage, very accurate, and repairs using many of their drops. Again, ammo on it is the only drawback.

But, like you said, ammo in the game is one of the drawbacks. I'm seriously thinking about making a neutral character my next play through that has a low strength score, just so that I can't carry much with me, forcing myself to carry only two or three weapons.

I also think that the idea of having to use a workbench for repairs is brilliant, and it just makes absolute sense. This may be too complicated to implement, but what if you could repair using either identical weapons, OR junk, with junk being far less reliable and making the weapon more prone to jams and the like. I know, changes the mechanics of it quite a bit, but the system in Far Cry 2 is actually pretty good for that.

In other news though, Bethesda has announced DLC and the GECK editor. Taken from http://www.kotaku.com

The official editor for Fallout 3 is hitting PCs for free next month and both the PC and 360 are getting DLC come January, with more due in February and March, Bethesda Softworks announced today.

 

“We’ve always seen the original world of Fallout 3 as a foundation for even more content. Some created by us, and a lot more created by users,” said Todd Howard, game director for Fallout 3. “It’s fun to create your own character, but it can be equally fun to create your own adventures. We can’t wait to see what the community does with the G.E.C.K.”

 

The Garden of Eden Creation Kit will let users create, modify, and edit any data for use with Fallout 3, from building landscapes, towns, and locations to writing dialogue, creating characters, weapons and creatures.

 

The three downloadable content packs coming to the 360 and Games for Windows Live starting in January will add new quests, items and content:

 

• Operation: Anchorage. Enter a military simulation and fight in one of the greatest battles of the Fallout universe – the liberation of Anchorage, Alaska from its Chinese Communist invaders. An action-packed battle scheduled for release in January.

• The Pitt. Journey to the industrial raider town called The Pitt, located in the remains of Pittsburgh. Choose your side. Scheduled for release in February.

• Broken Steel. Join the ranks of the Brotherhood of Steel and rid the Capital Wasteland of the Enclave remnants once and for all. Continues the adventure past the main quest. Scheduled for release in March.

I'm so glad they're adding the Pitt. I found a note referencing it, and was very frustrated when I discovered it wasn't in the game. And I'm especially looking forward to continuing past the main story.

Speaking of which, who here has beaten the game, and what are your thoughts? I beat it a few days ago, and must say I was slightly disappointed. Not because it was a bad ending, but because it just didn't live up to the rest of the game.

Re: Fallout 3: Postapocalyptica

Seriously.

 

Railway Rifle for the WIN. Things I'm not sure I can give up in any run through of this game: My Repair skill. The rest I can fake, but Repair is THE reason I'm successful. I can take a collection of five garbage shotties and turn them into decent weapon. I find Hunting Rifles like they're candy. I have a stack of 10 good condition 10mm pistols in a closet. It's SILLY how much stuff you wind up with, and that's the inherent failing. You get good, you kill bad guys. Bad guys drop stuff. You collect stuff. You get better. A vicious cycle.

Absolutely. The game was best at the beginning, in my opinion, when you first leave the vault and have this feeling that everything you see could be the difference between life and death. "9 10mm rounds? Better save those, never know when some Raiders could be over the next rise."

For literally the first hour or two I used solely a baseball bat I grabbed from my room on my way out of the vault, just so that I wouldn't have to waste ammo. Now though? I pawn off hundreds of rounds whenever I'm low on cash, I have literally well over two-thousand rounds of various types of energy cells (I rarely use laser or plasma weapons), and I hover a little under a thousand 5.56. The only ammunition I ever run low on is .40, just because I use Lincoln's Repeater so much.

It's a shame it becomes less of a survival game and more of a slaughter-house towards the end, but it's still fun as hell.

Re: My mostly hard sci-fi campaign

 

Psychological considerations: Space travel has psychological effects as well as physical effect. Travelers can suffer from claustrophobia, homesickness, boredom, loneliness, and irritability with other travelers. All potential colonists are thoroughly screened before being accepted, but these problems still occur from time to time. Psychologists and security officers are on the alert for these instances. There are also other activities and virtual reality simulations available to the crew and passengers to alleviate these problems.

As for this, have you seen the movie Sunshine? It's a pretty great example of how people react to long, stressful trips in space (complete with virtual reality simulations!). It gets a bit out of hand toward the end, but still a pretty good example.

Otherwise, bravo for continuing to work on this, I'm going to have to go back through and read up on everything that's been written down. I'm trying to construct a somewhat realistic history for the Terran Empire still, so anything that goes up on here is greatly appreciated.

Keep it up!

Re: What Have You Watched Recently?

Been watching Top Gear obsessively the past few weeks after catching it a few times (thanks to some members of this board who spoke highly of it), and I'm completely in love with this show. As is everyone I've shown it to.

Bloody brilliant.